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Provide Consistent and Loving Care

Providing consistent, loving care is about helping families negotiate separations in healthy ways as well as evaluating care conditions. Child care is one of the most central topics because of current economic pressures on families.

Center-type care in particular has raised many questions, and new findings from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD) indicate that long-term results can be a mixed bag. Surprising new evidence about the role of child temperament provides new perspectives about child care. Additionally, four care scenarios were identified and relate to child outcomes and help us understand care from a more encompassing, ecological perspective. We gain further information about the impact that longer-term parental separations and absences can have on children, and in cases where military parents are deployed, we clearly see the challenges as well as the potential for healthy repair with the right information and support.

High-quality parenting was predictive of greater academic and social skills for all children, but particularly children with a difficult temperament. In addition, high-quality non-parental child care predicted fewer behavioral problems in children with difficult temperaments.

While high-quality child care was predictive of greater pre-academic skills, children who spent more time in non-parental child care, especially in center-type care, tended to have more behavior problems that continued into adolescence.

While it is well known that traumatic or extended separations negatively impact child development, even week-long separations that occur within the first two years of life have lasting consequences on child behavior.

Post-deployment programs that address parenting would be helpful, especially for families with children from birth through age 5, as this age group is particularly vulnerable to changes in attachment patterns.